


A call and a response

by MidLifeLez



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Shameless Smut, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-04 02:08:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12760938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidLifeLez/pseuds/MidLifeLez
Summary: She hadn’t meant to be doing this. She hadn’t planned for it.





	A call and a response

There’s a moan in Bernie’s throat – a moan? A sound, anyhow: half formed, no edges, unbidden, but rising nonetheless, and it doesn’t matter about being noisy anymore, not now, not in this bed, not since everything is okay again, but there’s a quiet lifetime inside of her, twenty-odd years of stifled gasps and breaths half taken and then, more recently, yells gobbled up in kisses and growls into sweaty palms in dusty tents, and for all the months of wild cries and Serena loud and low and tremulous in the dark - oh, _oh_ , still, for all of that - right now, in this moment, she’s all instinct, biting down on Serena’s shoulder to bury the incipient syllables in her lover’s skin. Instinct, her mind a muddle, her senses in nonsense – she can taste Serena’s perfume and hear the freckles on her arms and smell the heat of her – but her body faithfully precise: it knows where _exactly_ her hands are on Serena’s body, knows _just_ how much she can press at Serena’s back, knows where and how Serena wants her to a degree of accuracy that puts all of Serena’s previous lovers to shame. It can do all of this at the same time as Bernie’s mind succumbs to sensation, as she lets go the edges of conscious thought.

She hadn’t meant to be doing this. She hadn’t planned for it. There were no candles lit, there was no romantic music playing gently as they’d undressed for bed. It had been a normal day. A nice day. A nice day together, doing not very much at all, after a week that had kept them both busy – never too far from one another, just preoccupied, or tired. A nice day when they had been able to go out into the world together, arm in arm along the high street, Bernie’s hand at the small of Serena’s back as they left the coffee shop, Serena’s hand at Bernie’s elbow as they browsed in the antique shop. A nice day when they had both felt how lucky they were to have one another; how fortunate, after all the years they had lived unknown to each other; how remarkable, after all they had been through in such a short time since. A nice, normal day. And at the end of it they’d shared a toothpaste-y kiss and Serena had laid down on her front and Bernie had laid down next to her, on her back, and stared up at the ceiling and trailed her fingertips absent-mindedly up and down Serena’s spine.

“That feels nice,” Serena had said after a while, her voice thick with the beginnings of sleep but her words asking Bernie to carry on. So Bernie had turned over onto her side, focused now entirely on Serena: on the patterns she draws across Serena’s back, on the flutter beneath Serena’s skin as Bernie’s nails run down her sides, a thousand silent I-love-yous on her fingertips.

“Oh god, Bernie,” Serena had said after another while, her voice gruffer still, her hips flexing to push her front against the mattress, just for a moment, just long enough to draw Bernie closer: a call and a response. Serena has never known her desires as agony – of course it had hurt when Bernie went to Ukraine, and she had shed tears even as she had shuddered under her own fingers, an image of Bernie in her mind – but she has never felt her love for another as self-loathing, like Bernie has. So each time Bernie answers her call as she had on this night, as she does every time, Serena shivers at being loved so gladly and without hesitation. “Oh god, Bernie,” she had said, pressing into the mattress, and in an instant, in a fraction of a moment, a beat too short to count, fingertips had turned into a warm palm sliding over her hip, Bernie’s breasts against her back, Bernie’s breath on her neck, chased by a kiss.

Serena’s words are the last thing that Bernie hears at normal volume; after that the rustling of the sheets beneath their bodies and the breath that scurries out of each of them at irregular intervals and the rapid beating of her heart all hammer in her ears. Serena is sensory overload. This she knows. Serena, naked and glorious, is enough to rid her of any thought for, any interest in, any curiosity about, the world beyond her immediate touch. She knows it and she isn’t terrified, not any more. Serena, naked and glorious and _oh, Christ; oh god; oh good lord: wet, so wet,_ beneath her. Who wants a mind, anyway? Who wants words and intellect now? Anyone who needs to think when they have Serena like this doesn’t deserve her.

Serena feels Bernie’s mouth on her shoulder; when Bernie’s teeth press at her skin she gasps, the sound shooting out sharp-edged into the darkness, a contrast to the babble brimming on Bernie’s lips. The bite sends a shock, a delicious shock of electricity through her even if she might have anticipated it. (‘It’s okay to let it out,’ she’s said in the past; ‘I know,’ was Bernie’s response, ‘I do know. I just, it just, in the moment… it’s not deliberate.’ She had looked up at Serena through her fringe, a shy smile tugging at the edges of her mouth. ‘I’ll get there?’ And Serena had felt her chest tighten, had brushed Bernie’s hair out of her eyes, and said, ‘It’s also okay if you don’t.’) She hates for Bernie to think of herself as lacking something in that department. Bernie whose hands are so perfectly sculpted that it can be hard to remember they’re not marble but flesh until they’re on you, and when they are on you, as they are now, then, _then_ , you know for sure what they’re made of, could recite the bones of the hand, of the fingers, if only you could think once – _ah_ , distal phalange; once – _oh yes,_ middle phalange; once – _fuck, FUCK!_ proximal phalange; if only you could think once they’re inside you.

Not that she feels like an ambassador for Mensa once they’re outside of her, either, skipping hot and damp over her stomach as Bernie reaches for her nipples. Serena can’t help but push herself up off the mattress, grinding back against damp curls and ensuring that Bernie has all the room she needs to tease and squeeze. There is only so much of this she can take, of course, but then Bernie does not think in terms of Serena’s orgasm. Bernie works in terms of Serena’s _first_ orgasm. If Serena comes right now, as she very well might if Bernie’s thigh, which has found its way between her legs, moves with anything approaching any kind of rhythm; if she comes right now, she knows Bernie will gently settle her back against the pillows, trail kisses down her body and then run her tongue along Serena’s lips – glistening, deep pink, delicious – slowly, so slowly. If Serena’s first orgasm sneaks up on her, her second sends on ahead, delivers a note on monogrammed stationery inviting her to enjoy the pleasure of its company.

But for now Serena is hot and slick against Bernie’s thigh and there is not a thought, not a single one, in Bernie’s head. Every synapse is otherwise engaged: with the kisses she presses vertebra-by-vertebra to Serena’s back, her mouth never quite leaving the skin, her sighs, soft and reverent – _ah, oh, ah_ – narrating the journey; with the feeling of Serena’s breast in her left hand, nipple pinched between index and middle finger as she applies the rolling pressure that Serena loves, that has Serena sighing in response – the sound deeper and filthier, more carnal, than anything that comes out of Bernie’s mouth but no less heartfelt for it; with the dance of her fingers over Serena’s clitoris – firm but gentle, sometimes quick, sometimes achingly slow, sliding up and down as if working clay, seeming to beckon Serena’s hips upwards, pulling her back against Bernie, into Bernie, into her angles. If Bernie were to think about it she would marvel at how natural this had felt to both of them, right from the beginning; at how perfectly they fitted together like this; at how it all made her feel. But there is not a thought, remember, in Bernie’s head. Not a single one.


End file.
